


unbreakable.

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: We're not meant to be alone [9]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, and reuniting after 100 years of space, on platonic love, theres much hugging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26309221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: Nile jumps into his arms. Her hair is in braids, snug and intricate and bejeweled, and he grasps for her, her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders; warm and alive in his arms after a century of texting that devolved more and more into incomprehensible emojis over burner phones. | A hundred years from now, Booker reunites with his family.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: We're not meant to be alone [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906879
Comments: 29
Kudos: 305





	unbreakable.

Sebastien doesn’t go back to England for a hundred years. It lies cold and heavy on his skin; damp and sticky and iron-drowned. Andy’s anguish lies wrapped around it, snug in between Joe’s rage and Nicky’s cold, calm voice.

And then, in the English cold:

Andy cradles his face in calloused, worn hands, and they feel just as they did when she would hold him as he came back to life, something sluggish and groaning. Her eyes are worn and sharp, clear as a summer storm, and Sebastien’s voice is lost somewhere between her unbloodied smile and her unchanged hands. “Welcome back, asshole”, she says, and Booker wraps his arms around her and drops his head into the crook of her neck. She smells just as he remembers, like gun powder and sugared fruit. She feels like a constant in his arms, unchanged and unbreakable and alive and Sebastien’s hands tremble where they lie wrapped around her waist. Andy loops her arms around his neck and laughs. Booker trembles with it.

Quynh’s hands are shaking as she pulls him in. She smells of salt water, still, and blooming spring the way he remembers it. She touches him and Booker’s skin aches with it, heavy with two hundred years of dreaming, a hundred years of phone calls and soft whispered conversations. Once, he’d sat by his phone for hours, reading a collection of poems to her as she laughed and corrected his pronounciation. Once, she’d come to his filthy flat somewhere in France, her skin peeling, her lungs still stuttering, and Booker had taken her and her dreams and brought her home to Andy. Quynh laughs softly, now, her French impeccable, and Booker kisses her cheek and her hands as she laughs and laughs in cadence with the beat of his heart.

Nile jumps into his arms. Her hair is in braids, snug and intricate and bejeweled, and he grasps for her, her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders; warm and alive in his arms after a century of texting that devolved more and more into incomprehensible emojis over burner phones. A decade ago, or maybe three, a friend had taken his phone, alcohol buzzed and bursting with laughter and tried to decipher it. She hadn’t gotten very far and Booker had taken his phone back just as France shot a goal. Nile had texted him a picture of Nicky reading in the corner of their safehouse. Now, she’s here and she’s bubbling with joy and Booker can do nothing but hold onto her. Her hands are stained with paint, and they leave smears on his shirt and on his cheeks. Booker’s tongue is tied to the roof of his mouth – it lies heavy in his stomach.

Joe looks at him with his dark eyes and his soft, worn hands. There’s something cold in Booker’s bones, something like the Russian winter pulling at him, a noose around his neck as the sun sinks and sets around him. He takes a breath. “Joe, I’m sorry”, he says quietly, and opens his mouth to say something else, practiced over hours and years and decades, revised and rewritten in therapy sessions on Tuesdays and in between baking on Sundays, when Joe lifts him off his feet. Joe’s arms are warm and heavy around his torso, and Booker reaches for his shoulders, his neck, his curls, in between Joe’s whooping laughter. “Apologise later”, he says. “When I can throw pistacchios at you when you’re being a dick.” The cold in Booker’s bones melts with the swaying of the ground underneath him and the familiar sound of Joe’s voice around him. He laughs; breathless.

Nicky hasn’t said a word. Joe puts Booker down and smiles, open and joyful and full of light, and Booker’s skin might start bleeding from it all. He looks at Nicky and his calm hands; unmoving. Nicky tilts his head. There’s a breath stuck in Booker’s chest that he doesn’t quite know how to release. “I’ve missed you”, Nicky says, a language woven between them centuries ago, tucked in the four-fold stretch between Italian, Arabic, French and Genoese – yelled at a screen or a stadium or at Nicky reading in the corner. Booker nods, and then Nicky hugs him, too, something soft and full bodied and almost like a song. Nicky’s hands are warm on his back, solid and heavy; and Booker tucks his face into the space between his shoulder and his neck, the smell of parchment and fresh bread.

“Hello”, he says, and then; they’re a bundle of limbs wrapped around one another by the river Thames, a tangle of love.


End file.
